I work for a small staffing agency, and I help payroll. We have payroll problems fairly frequently, which break down to one of several causes:
1) The employee did not sign the timesheet at the worksite as we tell them repeatedly they must. Either they forget, or they try and tell us they were there when they weren't. The last few days I have been dealing with a man who claims he worked at a location and that we should remember this (out of hundreds of assignments every week), but if it is his word versus the paper trail (neither his name nor his signature is anywhere), he loses. He is threatening to call the Department of Labor; I am encouraging him in this, as maybe it will shut him up.
2) They do not understand why we deducted something. We tell everyone that there are deductions for showing up late or not showing up; getting lost is not an excuse, nor is claiming that we gave them the wrong call time. as we are careful about such things. And we tend not to book people on sites without telling them, as our clients don't much like it when no one shows up. We only book them after speaking with and confirming them.
Likewise, we do charge for uniforms - it then becomes their property and their responsibility. And we are required to garnish wages for court orders and child support and the like. (On a side note, the courts apparently don't realize that very few of our employees work anywhere close to 40 hours a week with us, and some far less. We have gotten orders to garnish wages, when the employee in question listed us as their employer - despite having not worked a single event in 2 years since registering . . .)
3) The employee did not pay attention to the payroll schedule. We pay weekly, but on a 2 week delay, with the period running from Monday to Sunday. As a result, when we had an event on Sunday and Monday, we had dozens of people complaining that we "forgot" to pay them for Monday - I was telling them for a week that Monday is the next paycheck.
4) Incomplete information from the employee. If they signed in with a different name from what we have in the payroll database, if they gave us an incomplete address, if their SSN matches that of another employee - it adds up to them not getting a paycheck until we can fix it.
5) Errors on our part. Being fairly small, we have to be flexible. The one person in charge of payroll does other things, and sometimes mistakes are made. We are willing to fix them as soon as we are sure what the issue is.
1) The employee did not sign the timesheet at the worksite as we tell them repeatedly they must. Either they forget, or they try and tell us they were there when they weren't. The last few days I have been dealing with a man who claims he worked at a location and that we should remember this (out of hundreds of assignments every week), but if it is his word versus the paper trail (neither his name nor his signature is anywhere), he loses. He is threatening to call the Department of Labor; I am encouraging him in this, as maybe it will shut him up.
2) They do not understand why we deducted something. We tell everyone that there are deductions for showing up late or not showing up; getting lost is not an excuse, nor is claiming that we gave them the wrong call time. as we are careful about such things. And we tend not to book people on sites without telling them, as our clients don't much like it when no one shows up. We only book them after speaking with and confirming them.
Likewise, we do charge for uniforms - it then becomes their property and their responsibility. And we are required to garnish wages for court orders and child support and the like. (On a side note, the courts apparently don't realize that very few of our employees work anywhere close to 40 hours a week with us, and some far less. We have gotten orders to garnish wages, when the employee in question listed us as their employer - despite having not worked a single event in 2 years since registering . . .)
3) The employee did not pay attention to the payroll schedule. We pay weekly, but on a 2 week delay, with the period running from Monday to Sunday. As a result, when we had an event on Sunday and Monday, we had dozens of people complaining that we "forgot" to pay them for Monday - I was telling them for a week that Monday is the next paycheck.
4) Incomplete information from the employee. If they signed in with a different name from what we have in the payroll database, if they gave us an incomplete address, if their SSN matches that of another employee - it adds up to them not getting a paycheck until we can fix it.
5) Errors on our part. Being fairly small, we have to be flexible. The one person in charge of payroll does other things, and sometimes mistakes are made. We are willing to fix them as soon as we are sure what the issue is.
